Hard Teaching 4: Jesus's appearances after death

The full question I was asked was this:

What was going on when Jesus appeared after death? Could heaven be on earth?

I want to try and answer this from two points of view. First of all, from the disciples' point of view, and then from Jesus' standpoint.

So what did the disciples think was going on?

Well first of all, they thought that they'd lost. Jesus had been defeated. This is going out on penalties, being relegated, watching your team go into administration, and having the Olympics awarded to another country all on the same day. It doesn't get any worse than this.

You don't start following the Messiah, expecting him to end up dead on a cross.

So the last thing, and I do mean the very very last thing any of them expected, was to see Jesus again. Maybe this accounts for the fact that they didn't recognise him at first. Or if they did, they thought he was a ghost. On the resurrection front, their expectations were so far below ground level they were bumping against the Earth's core. For them, nothing could be less likely to happen than for Jesus to come strolling in with a grin on his face, saying "Surprise!"

Have I laboured the point enough? So when Mary met him at the tomb, when Cleopas and friend walked with him to Emmaus, when Peter saw him in secret, and when they all (except Thomas) had him gatecrash their evening meal, they weren't looking for him, or hoping for him to appear. At least, not alive.

May thought he was the gardener, Cleopas thought he must have been a stranger to Jerusalem, since he pretended not to know what had happened, the ten in the upper room thought ... I don't know what. It took time and effort on Jesus' part to convince them that he was back from the dead.

But there's also something mysterious about him. They can touch him, yet somehow he's reluctant for them to do so. He "appears," even though the doors are locked. Even when they look at him, sometimes they can't seem to focus on his face properly. He's different somehow.

Now, what about it from Jesus' point of view? Sometimes I imagine the Incarnation as a diver, where Jesus forces himself below the surface of the water into a world that, strictly speaking, is alien to him. When he dies, it's as if he "pops out" back into the air of heaven, and has to take a deep breath and force himself back into earthly existence for a few minutes in order to speak to his friends.

If you've ever read "Water Bugs and Dragonflies," perhaps you'll know what I mean. In this little story, the larvae of dragonflies, who live under water, are confused when some of their number disappear from their sight. They haven't died, they've become dragonflies, new and beautiful creatures that no longer belong in the watery world.

The Bible tells us that if we trust in Jesus, we will eventually have resurrection bodies, which surpass the glory of our earthly bodies to a similar extent. What if Jesus after his resurrection, now clothed in his resurrection body, was holding his breath as it were, and diving back under the surface of the water to speak to us again?

A little bit of heaven, come to earth. Just for a while.